Linux From Scratch - Version 8.1-rc1

Chapter 4. Final Preparations

4.2. Creating the $LFS/tools
Directory

All programs compiled in Chapter 5
will be installed under $LFS/tools to
keep them separate from the programs compiled in Chapter
6. The programs compiled here are temporary tools and will not be
a part of the final LFS system. By keeping these programs in a
separate directory, they can easily be discarded later after their
use. This also prevents these programs from ending up in the host
production directories (easy to do by accident in Chapter
5).

Create the required directory by running the following as
root:

mkdir -v $LFS/tools

The next step is to create a /tools
symlink on the host system. This will point to the newly-created
directory on the LFS partition. Run this command as root as well:

ln -sv $LFS/tools /

Note

The above command is correct. The ln command has a few syntactic
variations, so be sure to check info
coreutils ln and ln(1) before reporting what you may think is an
error.

The created symlink enables the toolchain to be compiled so that it
always refers to /tools, meaning that
the compiler, assembler, and linker will work both in Chapter 5 (when
we are still using some tools from the host) and in the next (when we
are “chrooted” to the LFS partition).